Graeme Archer works as a statistician, and is a winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Blogging. He writes a column in Saturday's Daily Telegraph.

Please Scotland: vote to keep the pound

My middle names should be "broken clock", rather than "Ernest Barclay", given how often I'm right with political predictions. The clock has stopped on the Scottish referendum, however. Last Saturday I wrote this in the newspaper:

…an independent Scotland’s preferences in a future [Sterling] currency union would no more dominate decision-making in the Bank of England than did those of Cypriots within the European Central Bank. Currency union absent political integration is the reason the single currency could never work. This is Salmond’s best currency outcome, remember: his alternative is to join the euro.

This morning, the Chancellor went further (so I wasn't completely right, after all) than I'd expected, ruling out a post-independence Scotland having membership of a Sterling currency union. Mr Osborne went to Edinburgh to say "If Scotland walks away from the UK, it walks away from the pound."

That's pretty clear, even to the most extreme nationalist. And as Andrew Lilico has blogged, that leaves Salmond offering Scotland the chance to join that go-ahead currency, the Euro.

Alternatively the SNP could invent their own currency, or simply carry on using Sterling with no say in interest rates and no BoE last-resort lender status. I wonder what would happen to the banks then. Quite.

Some will say – I'm sure an SNP spokesperson has already said – that raising the stakes in this way is a sign of fear, as well as being, somehow, ungentlemanly. If they've said this, then for the first time in my life (the broken clock theory again) I'm in complete agreement with the nationalists.

Those of us who believe in Union are afraid. Mania is always frightening to witness, and having spent my entire adult lifetime watching Alex Salmond's endless agitation to break-up my country, of course I'm afraid that he could finally succeed. Not the least reason that I so keenly anticipate the referendum is the hope that, once defeated, extreme Scottish nationalism might retreat to being the bizarre fetish of the misguided few which it ought always to have remained. (Then adults could get on with working out how to improve life for the dispossessed, north and south of the border. The weirdest aspect of Left-wing Scottish Nationalism is its sublime indifference to the suffering of the poor, if that suffering occurs south of Hadrian's wall. Solidarity, much?)

But it is neither ungentlemanly nor wrong to "risk" (I'm sure some commentators will describe it thus) setting out the ramifications of separation. Salmond's best bet for victory has always been to persuade voters in Scotland that post-independence would be just like it is now, with fewer visits from David Cameron.

But if that were the case, why bother with the vote? Why devote your career to seeking an objective, if by attaining said objective, nothing much would change? Actions must have consequences, else there be no point to them, and one consequence of ripping apart the United Kingdom, and establishing a separate country called Scotland, is that this new country will require a currency. It's beyond a farce that the SNP have never had a good answer to this, and the Chancellor should be congratulated for finally forcing the issue.

My own repeated question: why should my English father be made into a foreigner to me? enrages some SNP supporters, precisely because I have the temerity to keep pointing out that this is what independence means. (Plus, of course, the mere fact of being Scottish and Right-wing enrages them, because in their mythology, creatures such as I do not exist.)

If it is "risky" to confront head-on the consequences of breaking up the Union, then bravo Chancellor for forcing that risk. In any event, I believe the greater risk afflicts the proponents of nationalist separatism, because at least now they will be forced to tell us (and remember, they've had decades to think of an answer): what currency would an independent Scotland adopt?